Monday, April 07, 2008

Green activists edit WMO & BBC reports

you will see a very revealing exchange between Roger Harrabin, a moderate and relatively non-ideological BBC journalist, and Jo Abbess, a green activist, a photographer of Gaia believers, a passionate Christian advocate of love, and a SIF (Single Issue Fanatic).

Harrabin received the information and statements from the World Meteorological Organization and wrote an innocent article saying that

Jo Abbess protested that it could be misinterpreted by the "skeptics/sceptics" who are fighting against the "emerging truth". They could misinterpret Harrabin's article by saying that there could even be doubts about the omnipresent and omnipotent global warming since 1998 and some of them could even suggest that the temperatures are going to decrease. Wow, what a heresy. ;-) A responsible journalist simply cannot allow such doubts.

After several exchanges in which Jo Abbess threatened Harrabin to use various ecoharrassment websites and (less-sexy-than-Jo) individuals joining the e-mail exchange to increase the pressure on Harrabin, the journalist decided to avoid the hassle with the unpleasant people and he changed the v1 of his article - a pretty much alarmist-friendly paragraph that was insufficiently orthodox for the activist:

"This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years."

into v2, in the way Jo Abbess demanded:

"But this year’s temperature would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases."

The v2 version has nothing whatsoever to do with the information that Roger Harrabin has actually received. In fact, they have the opposite sign. Neither the original story nor the data that Harrabin has received had anything to do with the greenhouse gases.

Well, this is how the media and not only media work these days. If the article doesn't obey the requirements of far-left movements from the very beginning and if the journalist resists the first batch of aggressive e-mails, he will usually surrender to the second batch. Many journalists are either biased activists or cowards. And some of them are both.

And that's the memo.

This doesn't deserve a separate article. But in the third final round of the Czech X Factor, The Popcorn Night (that came after The Chocolate Night), they were singing movie songs. The other gipsy band, "The Wild Cats and Dante", was unfortunately eliminated because "it was the same all the time". I don't think that the musical version of "America" from the West Side Story above is one of the best ones but it was good, anyway. In the lyrics, I like the verse "I prefer the island Manhattan, who is against is a cretin" that rhymes very well in Czech and Kamila Nývltová makes the "cretin" point very powerful. ;-) You may try an old Karel Gott's performance of Maria from the same musical opera. He's good and it is not surprising that the fourth final evening will be The Karel Night, dedicated to Gott's (and composer Karel Svoboda's) hits.

Sir Nigel Lawson who led, as the finance minister, the economical boom in the U.K. of the 1980s is promoting his new book (click on the left). He explains that the climate hysteria is leading to a New Age of Unreason (The Telegraph). See also his new article in the Financial Times urging the world to stop this foolish overreaction.

Bonus: Funding of RealClimate.ORG

A reader has asked me by e-mail who funds RealClimate.ORG. Well, it is not so difficult to find out. Just search for the registration information of RealClimate.ORG at WhoIs.NET and you will find out that RealClimate.ORG is run by Environmental Media Services and by Betsy Ensley.

EMS is primarily an organization to pay for junk science about food and beverages, often hired by food companies to damage their competitors; click the link in the previous sentence to learn more.

RealClimate.ORG has several sisters founded by the same Betsy Ensley, including WomenAgainstBush.ORG and BushGreenWatch.ORG. When Ensley was campaigning against Ashcroft, her secretary was Kalee Kreider who is now Al Gore's spokesperson. Al Gore's former press secretary, Arlie Schardt, is on the EMS's board of directors, too.

It's explained in one of the previous links that EMS also owns Fenton Communications, a group providing various "progressive" non-profit organizations with many services. They are best known for their representation of MoveOn.ORG. Fenton also organized the initial press release promoting RealClimate.ORG, a move that was most likely sparked by an immediate attempt to counter the influence of "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton.